Help talk:Cite errors/Archive 5

Broken ref: language support
One unresolved issue is that users with a language set to other than  see the default message in the selected language without the link to the help page. broken ref/sandbox now supports translations of "see the help page" for the top used languages per Database reports/User preferences. The "see the help page" translations are in broken ref/lang and can be easily expanded. Translations were culled from the various language versions of MediaWiki:Newarticletext. Translations for the main message are already in place in each MediaWiki page. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 13:43, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

False negatives
I don't know why there are so many false negatives appear here, i.e. articles that don't actually have any fault. I would estimate at least 50%. The only way I know to clear them is by null edit. There must be one or more background processes which plod through all the pages, occasionally picking on one to mark incorrectly – some of the pages have had no change for as long as a year. It's all very tedious.

John of Cromer in Philippines (talk) mytime= Sat 15:42, wikitime= 07:42, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
 * There is no bot or other process that goes through periodically and tags articles. Whenever a reference is added, deleted or changed, the software extension immediately checks for errors and calls the message. Articles can have stale messages, but you can usually fix that with a purge. If you point out a current issue I can take a look at it. --   Gadget850 (Ed) talk 11:04, 6 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I work through Category:Pages with missing references list. Yesterday it was cleared, twice.  It usually gains two or three dozen a day.  This morning it had more than 300 items in it.  Even now it has 250-ish.  At least 80% have no error, but need a null edit to clear them off the list.  How/why do they get on the list?  Most have not been changed in weeks.  I think a reasonable solution would be to make getting on the list a two-step process - since null edit clears the spurious ones, make null edit a part of getting on the list, so that only the really wrong remain.  John of Cromer in Philippines (talk) mytime= Sun 00:22, wikitime=  16:22, 6 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Paularo is an example. It is shown on the category page - even after I purge the category - but the category is not listed at the foot of the article. The article hasn't been edited for weeks, and I can't see any recent template or module edit that would account for it. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:41, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Ditto the next one in the category, Pemara. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:44, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
 * This has nothing to do with the cite system. Per Help:Category:
 * Changes to the template, however, may not be reflected immediately on the category page. When you edit an article to add a category tag directly, the list of category members is updated immediately when the page is saved. When a category link is contained in a template, however, this does not happen immediately: instead, whenever a template is edited, all the pages that transclude it are put into the job queue to be recached during periods of low server load. This means that, in busy periods, it may take hours or even days before individual pages are recached and they start to appear in the category list. Performing a null edit to a page will allow it to jump the queue and be immediately recached.
 * The template broken ref is used to control the messages. This can happen to any article in any category for any error message. --  Gadget850 (Ed) talk 17:29, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm confused. Please have a look at the history of Pemara and of the few templates it uses. I can see no reason for that article to have been placed in the error category at any time in the last few weeks. The article has had one edit this year, unrelated to its referencing; and according to the list displayed below the edit box, only one relevant template has changed since 26 February, and that edit was unrelated to referencing. Yet Johnmperry states that the error category was clear yesterday. So how did the article get into the error category today? -- John of Reading (talk) 19:56, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't know. Ask at WP:VPT. --  Gadget850 (Ed) talk 21:23, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you for investigating. I'll save some snapshots of the category in my sandbox and post some solid evidence at VPT if I catch one misbehaving. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:46, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I did take it to WP:VPT and a bug has been opened. Main question remains, what is causing dormant pages to be reassessed?    (talk) mytime= Sun 18:41, wikitime=  10:41, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
 * An article is queued for re-assessment whenever there is an edit to any template or LUA module that it uses. Recently there have been many edits to much-used citation and other templates as part of the switch to LUA. It is therefore quite likely that the queues are long, so that the article is re-assessed at a random time some hours or days after the last template edit. But, as the bug report says, that doesn't explain why the articles are dropping into the error category. -- John of Reading (talk) 11:11, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I was wondering about that. I have been involved in the updates to Lua and we noticed the job queue, but Wikidata was also involved at the time. --   Gadget850 (Ed) talk 11:20, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
 * BTW, to answer a question above, the probable reason Pemara was re-assesed for categories (A RefreshLinksJob was run in tech speak) was most likely this edit to template:Hesperiinae. (That is of course a guess though). Its impossible to know if a change on a template will affect references (or categories), so any change causes the entire page to be reparsed. Bawolff (talk) 22:12, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Talk namespace restriction not true anymore?
WT:Criteria for speedy deletion is [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion&oldid=552253037 currently] showing " Cite error: tags exist, but no . A transclusion means we wouldn't have to manually keep the languages in sync. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:46, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I have a fix for this, but I have not had a block of time to implement it yet. See . --   Gadget850talk 01:41, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok ... maybe I should have paid more attention to the history of that page. Anyway, thanks. --SoledadKabocha (talk) 06:28, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * That should help for non-English languages but for en-gb and en-ca, it would be easier to just transclude MediaWiki:Cite error refs without references. Any objections to doing this now? It works for MediaWiki:Histlegend/en-gb. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:25, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Go ahead. --  Gadget850talk 12:33, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * OK. I started with MediaWiki:Cite error refs without references/en-ca. en-ca now says "Cite error:" and nothing more. It apparently comes from the default MediaWiki:Cite error/en-ca. MediaWiki:Cite error is customized to omit "Cite error:". Should we do the same for MediaWiki:Cite error/en-ca or does that interfere too much with other types of cite errors where en-ca messages expect "Cite error:" in front? Special:PrefixIndex/MediaWiki:Cite error shows a lot of messages. Have all of them been customized for normal English to add the "Cite error:" which is omitted in MediaWiki:Cite error? Do we have to either customize all or none of the cite error messages for a given language? Your template suggestion above at will have the same issue as far as I can see. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:31, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I updated the English interface pages, removed "Cite error:" from all of them and deleted MediaWiki:Cite error so it is at default. I can remember why it was deleted, but it seemed more logical to keep the prefix centralized. --  Gadget850talk 17:02, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * That has created the situation I described for en-ca: Cite errors for users with normal English now display "Cite error:" in all namespaces, but nothing after that if the following message is suppressed in the namespace. If we do it like this then MediaWiki:Cite error should be created and use the same namespace suppression as the following message. Do all cite error messages use the same namespace suppression? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:42, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Missed that. Should be fixed now. --  Gadget850talk 23:35, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't know if this is a red herring, or true, or relevant, but when I visit Category:Pages with missing references list it is empty apart from the 5 permanent members. That happens, but not when I wake up.  Unless someone has been working on it I would expect there to be about 10 true members (and the false ones have been stopped by the bug fix). Just saying.   John of Cromer in Philippines  (talk) mytime= Sun 06:39, wikitime=  22:39, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Should be fixed now. --  Gadget850talk 23:35, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I was going to say here's one Sajid Mahmood Bhatti which should have been enqueued 7 hours ago - I just fixed it.  John of Cromer in Philippines  (talk) mytime= Sun 08:42, wikitime=  00:42, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

The standard English and Spanish pages have been updated. British and Canadian English pages have been redirected. Broken ref now has a list of all supported language interface pages with an edit link. --  Gadget850talk 01:01, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Trying to use mixed footnotes and shortened footnotes without luck
I tried maybe a half-dozen variations, saving one just for reference. I'm not sure how they are linked in the implementation, so not sure what to change to get it to work. --Ronz (talk) 00:10, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Don't use the first name in sfn. The anchor is made from the last name only. --  Gadget850talk 00:26, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I tried multiple variations on that without luck. --Ronz (talk) 02:35, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I added a year= and removed the ref marks, and it works now ! --Ronz (talk) 02:59, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Cite error: $1
This error is (um, very) vague, and attempts to find out what it means just go round in circles. I ended up at Help:Cite_errors/Cite_error which claims to offer help, but does not. Perhaps this is an internal error or something -- surely it should be possible to give some sort of indication? Imaginatorium (talk) 14:24, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
 * On what page do you/did you find the error? -- John of Reading (talk) 15:30, 11 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your response... I have fixed the page (Trolley problem, but I believe it was on this older version: (sorry, don't know how to make a 'smart' link). But now a real meaningful version of the message is there...


 * So the error message itself is perhaps not a big problem -- but it would really help if the help page said something like "internal/temporary error". Somewhere I saw a suggestion that a "purge" would help, but I couldn't face another Google roundtrip to try to find out what a purge is. Imaginatorium (talk)
 * Someone vandalized broken ref/lang a while back, which resulted in only the message prefix showing. I reverted and protected that template. The page just needed a purge to resolve this. --  Gadget850talk 18:25, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Page Rated R (Rihanna album) with incorrect ref formatting
The references, used in prior text defined as:

show incorrect results:

83. ^ |UK R&B (Official Charts Company) |align="center"|1

84. ^ |UK Singles (Official Charts Company) |align="center"|2

'''Cite error: tag with name "sc_UKrandb_Rihanna" defined in, a template he made:

Talk:Acid Rap
Posting this here due to a couple of my ref tag cite errors over at Talk:Acid_Rap that the admins aren't helping much with. Ben0kto (talk) 23:28, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Which admins? There is no request for help at Talk:Acid Rap, so where or who have you asked? -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:56, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Backlog Status as of...

 * see Bot requests


 * 1500 pages 10 October 2013
 * 21 pages 17 October 2013
 * 52 pages 19:30, 21 October 2013 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Frze (talk • contribs) 19:25, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
 * For clarity, since this is a shared talk page, Frze has been working on Category:Pages with broken reference names. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:45, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Help:Cite_errors/Cite_error_ref_numeric_key
I wanted to cite a blog post titled "Commandant's Column: Envisioning USAWC 2020" (archive) for which "2020" seemed like a reasonable name...denied! &mdash; rybec   21:58, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * In the construct text of ref, identifier cannot be a pure integer. You could use but please note that blogs are not considered reliable sources. -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:26, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Add nocat to the appropriate MediaWiki pages
Please add |nocat= to the call to Template:broken ref on MediaWiki:Cite croak and any other error messages that lack it. That way, Help:Cite errors/header can include nocat, thereby preventing Help:Cite errors/Cite croak (and other pages) from being included in the maintenance categories. 63.251.123.2 (talk) 20:04, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * You don't want to hide Cite_croak in any circumstance; it indicates a software error. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 21:31, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I know what Cite_croak means. That isn't what is being proposed. What I'm asking is for the existing suggestion from Template:Broken_ref to be applied, in order to allow the Help pages to avoid being incorrectly included in inappropriate maintenance categories. Please re-consider. 63.251.123.2 (talk) 21:39, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * This won't be enough to take the help pages out of the error category, because most of them deliberately trigger an error as a demonstration. Try previewing Help:Cite errors/Cite error ref no key after deleting the two instances of Help:Cite errors/header. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:51, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I see the problem, yes. It would work for the pages that don't include examples (like Help:Cite errors/Cite croak) but you are right, we'd need to figure out another solution for excluding the subpages of Help:Cite_errors that deliberately include errors. A simple solution would be to exclude the whole of the Help namespace (as is already done for the Talk namespace), but I'm not sure if that is actually a good idea. Suggestions? 63.251.123.2 (talk) 23:13, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the template. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:39, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Will do, sorry for the trouble. 63.251.123.2 (talk) 23:13, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I added 'nocat' on December 27, 2013. This only works when you directly translude one of the MediaWiki pages but not when cite.php triggers an error. See the doc page. --  Gadget850talk 01:02, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Namespaces and Template:Broken ref
I noticed that Template:Broken ref works differently in the various namespaces. Actually, I remember that, because I took part in the original discussion regarding this:


 * In article, help, category, template and file namespaces: adds message and error category.
 * In user namespace: adds message but not error category.
 * In other namespaces: the message is suppressed by an invisible span and no error category.

This is pretty logical:


 * Both the message and the error category in article, help, and template namespaces: because we want this to be fixed, right away or later by editors who work through the error category..
 * Only the message in user namespace: because we don't care to fix other people's userspace, but we still want the user himself to fix it.

I have two suggestions:


 * Move category and file namespaces from the first to the second group. They are not an article, not a template which is transcluded in articles, and not a helppage, which is supposed to help so should itself be error-free. So basically, we don't care that much.
 * Remove the invisible span from other non-talk namespaces. We still want the editor who makes the error to fix it. Debresser (talk) 00:46, 9 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I would like categories and files to remain in the error categories. It's a way to spot some vandalism and misguided edits that would otherwise be missed. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:55, 9 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I see your point. You are saying that categories and files are more heavily edited than other namespaces, so you want to keep a check on them. I don't really agree with you, but it is probably a judgment call.
 * My second-step proposal would be that since the number of pages in the error category is low (used to be hundreds and thousands, and is now tens), we should, after giving people a month or so to see the error messages in other non-talk namespaces, add all of them to the error category, to fix them all. Debresser (talk) 08:41, 9 December 2013 (UTC)